Re: sabbatical project

[dbateman]

thomas.l.scofield wrote:
> 
> 
> Hello.
> 
> I haven't contributed that much to Octave as of yet.  My main  
> contribution was to alter imread from its state in octave-forge so  
> that it would use the GraphicsMagick library, and to significantly re- 
> write imwrite so that it would use that same library, and so it would  
> become much more Matlab-like.
> 
> While these things were fun, and helped me understand the Octave  
> culture and structure to some extent, I'm really more interested in  
> implementing mathematical algorithms and/or developing packages to do  
> state-of-the-art calculations for mathematical problems.  As a  
> college professor with enough years of service, I am eligible for a  
> sabbatical, approximately half of a school year (plus summers on  
> either end of the year) to work on some project I propose and deemed  
> worthy by my school.  I am seeking both advice and help.
> 
> When it comes to advice, I would appreciate help with choosing a  
> package to work on.  I have done some work in imaging and am  
> interested in doing more, and in that vein I have thought it would be  
> interesting to work on packages of the following types: general image  
> processing (contributions to the image package), a package for  
> compressive sampling, a package for level set methods, and a wavelet  
> package; I believe the latter three would be new starts in Octave.   
> Having identified these possible packages, I'm afraid the standard  
> "work on what you are interested in" will not help me here.  What  
> would help is knowing whether packages like these are getting some  
> attention already, whether there would be much demand, and insight  
> into the dependency structure (i.e., I do not yet know enough about  
> level set methods to know if it would helpful to have a wavelet  
> package already in place).
> 
> As for help, at my school a sabbatical proposal must be accompanied  
> by "a letter of endorsement from a scholar outside the college (i.e.,  
> a non-Calvin scholar or colleague who knows the relevant field of  
> scholarship, is familiar with the applicant's previous work, and is  
> in a position to assess both the importance of the proposed project  
> and the likelihood of its being brought to successful completion)."   
> I know a post at octave-forge would probably be better, since any  
> work on a package I do is likely to end up there, but I think only  
> people in the octave-maintainers list are going to be at all familiar  
> with the scant work I've done.  Do any of you feel qualified to write  
> such a letter?
> 
> I'm afraid I'm putting this together rather late.  I have to have all  
> materials for the proposal submitted to college officials by Friday  
> Sept. 20 (1 week from today).
> 
> Thomas L. Scofield
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Associate Professor
> Department of Mathematics and Statistics
> Calvin College
> --------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 

Some of my thoughts and Jaroslav's about what the goals for 3.3 should be
are in the thread

http://www.nabble.com/forum/ViewPost.jtp?post=19182313

Though Michael has also started in on classdef support, so I suppose that
should also be considered a 3.3 goal. The only really mathematical subject
there is the non-linear minimizers, though I think Jaroslav has started on
that. For the less mathematical tasks I still believe the tree walker
evaluator class is the next big thing that is needed to get better
acceptance of Octave as its a necessary step towards a profiler, a compiler
and a JIT. 

Octave supports matlab mex files and so wavelab works fine under Octave, so
its a little difficult to say that Octave needs a wavelet toolbox. As for
other things, well I'd look for inspiration in missing toolbox or core
functions. Check

 http://wiki.octave.org/wiki.pl?MissingMatlabFunctions

for the list of missing Matlab 2008a core function in Octave 3.0.1 with
their current state with respect to 3,1.51+

Regards
David
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